Burning Down the House by Julian E. Zelizer

Author:Julian E. Zelizer [Zelizer, Julian E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-07T05:00:00+00:00

Six

SCANDAL FRENZY

In late February, the special counsel Richard Phelan delivered an exhaustive 450-page report on Speaker Wright to the House Ethics Committee, documenting every alleged wrongdoing he had discovered. After nine months and almost $1.5 million, the blistering report made the Speaker look like a petty politician, at best, who routinely abused power for personal gain. Phelan was heavy-handed with the evidence, twisting information in a negative fashion and inserting every charge into the document regardless of its veracity. He claimed that Wright had violated the rules over a hundred times. His report left no doubt of the Speaker’s guilt, at least in his opinion.1 He followed up by testifying, point by point, before the committee during three weeks of hearings.

Phelan’s case was at least superficially strengthened by Wright’s dough-faced attorney William Oldaker, who tried to bring the controversy to a conclusion with old-fashioned backroom negotiations based on rational appeals to the facts and a measure of good old wheeling and dealing. Oldaker was an expert on election laws and fund-raising rules; he felt at home in the world of cigar-chomping lobbyists and litigators who knew how to make deals when partisan passions flared. As such, he was doing everything possible to refute the accusations in private meetings with members of Congress. But Oldaker was out of his league. He had few tools to counteract the pressure coming from congressional Republicans and investigative reporters, not to mention the histrionics of Phelan.2

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